Style Guides: Home

This Libguide provides basic information on using style manuals for college research papers.

General information or information that applies to all style guides, is available here, on the home page. 

Information specific to individual style guides  may be found under the "Tabs" which are located at the top of this page.

Personal assistance is available in the library from the library workers or the writing tutors.   Library staff is available during all open hours.  Writing tutors are available on the East Liverpool and Salem Campuses. Please check at your local campus library for current semester tutoring availability.:

To learn hours and contact information for the Kent State University Writing Commons. 

You may also contact a Kent State University librarian at Ask a Librarian.

Ask your instructor which style he or she wishes you to use and if there are other special formatting instructions you should follow.  The style manuals listed here are the ones most often used by college students.  Click on the manual's title to go to a quick quide created for that manual or chose the manual's tab (above) for additional information.

• APA Style Guide
  Often preferred in the fields of psychology, nursing, health sciences, business, and life (Biology) and physical sciences.
• MLA Style Guide
  Often preferred in the fields of literature, arts, humanities, and in some other disciplines.
• Chicago Style Guide
  Often preferred in history, sociology and many other disciplines. 
• Turabian: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
  Preferred by Philosophy

EasyBib

EasyBib was created by Darshan Somashekar and Neal Taparia, two high school friends with a huge writing assignment.  "We found that the most tedious part of our paper wasn't the writing or the researching, but the bibliography itself."  To make life easier, for themselves, they created EasyBib  "After a few months of figuring out all the bibliography rules (Neal) and coding the site (Darshan), the first version of EasyBib launched in February 2001."

BibMe

Bibme is a free automatic citation creator from Carnegie Mellon that supports MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian formatting. BibMe leverages external databases to quickly fill citation information. BibMe will then format the citation information and compile a bibliography according to the guidelines of the style manuals. It is also possible to enter citation information manually. BibMe features a citation guide that provides students with the style manuals' guidelines for citing references.

Citation Machine

Citation Machine is a free interactive web tool designed to assist in generating APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian publication styles. The primary goal of this tool is to make it so easy to credit information sources, there is virtually no reason not to!

KnightCite Citation Creator

A project of Hekman Library at Calvin College, KnightCite is a free resource that can be used to create citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats for many types of print and electronic resources.

The Library provides several tutorials on Plagiarism. 

Use RefWorks to create citations and bibliographies in various formats, including Chicago, MLA, and APA.

RefWorks is a useful tool; however, you should always check the RefWorks citation to make sure it is accurate.